tomatoes and lettuce may break my bones...

So I’m a DJ.

Once a week, I spin--er, click--records at Jake's Dilemma, a pub on 81st and Amsterdam. Pretty sweet gig. They pay handsomely, and beer is on the house. Anthony Barker (scholar, gentleman, all-around good fellow) alerted me to the position.

Being utterly neophytic in all things DJ, I’ve experienced a few minor setbacks during my shifts. Check it:

1) The mouse on my MacBook sticks, meaning I can’t maneuver songs up or down an iTunes queue for fear of the inadvertent double-click. Should I choose to deviate from a pre-prepared setlist, auditory seams begin to show. Let’s say I’ve assembled a 35-song list to get me started. All songs are set to fade cleanly from one to the next, effectively a) eliminating dead air and b) fooling people into thinking I’m a professional. Some clown approaches the DJ booth and requests Tonic’s “If You Could Only See.” Well, now I’m forced to employ a choppy, manual fade-out (one hand on the master volume, the other readied at the mouse) to grant his request. Not cool, dude. If any tech heads out there know how to move songs up or down a playlist without the standard click-and-drag, please 411 me. Stat.

2) My record collection leaves much to be desired. Nearly all rock from ’66 to about ’78 is covered, as is most 90s alternative and everything Radiohead ever released. I’ve accumulated a fair amount of 80s radio pop, too, and a few select rap/hip-hop artists, but there’s flagrant gaps all over the place. Hell, the other day I noticed--with astonishment--that I don’t even own “Layla.” (Never cared all that much for Clapton.) This is a problem. On my first night of DJing, some chick boozed her way over to the booth and requested The Killers, a forgettable band with forgettable, interchangeable songs. Suffice it to say, I own exactly zero of them (the songs, I mean). Chick wasn't pleased. This week I’ll be downloading music at a frenetic pace and researching my ass off. I need to figure out what 90% of the population has been listening to since the latter stages of the Carter administration, since my brain/soul/heart/wallet/liver are still lost somewhere in 1979.

3) I am not a friend of technology. What I mean is that I devolve into a full-fledged imbecile when confronted with digitized, sharply-angled machines. Knobs and buttons confuse me, as do these mythic concepts like “Wii” and “Twitter” and “cell phones.” Every time I set up my laptop in the DJ cubbie (an elevated, 3x3 foot space above the beer pong tables…yes, there’s beer pong), something goes awry while I attempt to decode the vertical whoozits on the display panel. That's usually when I freak out and begin to cry. Eight or ten fat, fat seconds pass while I try to achieve volume from two sticks and a knot of prairie grass. Nonplussed boozehounds hurl tomatoes, heads of lettuce, and Heineken bottles at my quaking body, which is protected--mercifully--by a barred enclosure which was featured once in an episode of American Gladiators, I think. (DJing is dangerous work, like shrimping or bike messengering.) After picking fresh ketchup and bits of green, broken glass from the folds of my shirtsleeves, I spin something delectably arcane--The Smiths, say--which only upsets them further. “What’s this gay shit?,” they grunt, shirt collars pointed at the moon. “You pug-nosed neanderthals,” I reply, “go buy yourself some taste.” That’s when I flip ‘em a quarter thru the caging, which always seems like a good idea at the time. More bottles, more lettuce. To spite them, I doggie paddle even further from the Top 40, playing Allman Brothers opuses a half hour long until I’m forcefully ejected from the cage by the biceps of management.

4) I deliberately break the rules. The fellas at Jake's Dilemma (a frat-ish "bro" bar) instruct me to stick to boring, straightaway rock, but do YOU know anyone capable of stomaching “Jet Airliner” nine or ten times without subjecting his ear to the fork? Didn’t think so. Other day, crazy bastard I am, I said, “Ah, the hell with it!,” and dipped my toe--hell, I went to the knee--into the Snoop Dogg/Ice Cube/Cypress Hill waters for about twenty minutes. Believe me, those beer-pongin’ honky cats ate it up. If management is wrong, I don’t want to be right. Wait...that makes no sense. But you catch my gist, right? What I'm trying to say is that I'm awesome, and more perceptive than my superiors. Jake's musical landscape is getting a makeover, one inflammatory track at a time.

5) Amy Winehouse’s “Back To Black” (the song, not the album) does NOT translate well to the dance floor. “You’re depressing the hell outta me,” some non-appreciative floozy informed me after my first--and last--spin of this colossal mood-killer. To spite her, I doggie paddled even further from the Top 40, playing Allman Brothers opuses a half hour long until I was forcefully ejected from the cage by the biceps of management.

DJing has been good for me, musically speaking. For purposes of completism, I’ve consciously ventured outside of my comfort zone and explored sounds/genres that I previously deemed unlistenable. Without further explanation (or a viable defense), let me just say that I’ve become hopelessly addicted to this song, a song so un-Elwood it’s disgusting:



^ Attached vid isn't much of a vid, unfortunately. The official, MTV-approved clip--the one that made me fall in love with an underage/very illegal Gabriella Cilmi--won't allow embedding in a blog, so I'm forced to post this dubious substitute. Anyway, give a listen and feel free to tomato/lettuce me for my new, non-discriminatory pop leanings. By now, I'm used to it.
...